Category: News

By Jennifer Donovan

November 13, 2012—

Michigan Tech has received a national Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) award from the magazine, INSIGHT into Diversity. The award cites Michigan Tech for “its outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion for the year 2012.”

The award, announced on Nov. 13, 2012, went to 48 colleges and universities nationwide. They were featured in the December 2012 issue of the magazine, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education.

Phragmites australis, an invasive species of plant called common reed, grows rapidly into dense stands of tall plants that pose an extreme threat to Great Lakes coastal wetlands. Early treatment is the key to controlling Phragmites.

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Michigan Technological University professor Zhi “Gerry” Tian has been named a Fellow of IEEE for her contributions to ultra-wideband wireless communications and localization.

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Michigan Technological University engineering students —supported by General Motors’ Chevrolet—designed and built two prototypes of hand-cranked three-wheel cycles for wounded veterans to ride in endurance races. So what better place to unveil their handiwork than the nationally televised Army-Navy football game

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While innovation in technology inexorably rolls on, some students from Michigan Tech recently had the chance to roll on the latest technology. The whole idea was to see for themselves how the principles learned in the classroom are actually making cars better and safer.
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The sixth annual conference sponsored by Michigan Tech’s international D80 Center was held on Saturday, Nov. 3, at the Great Lakes Research Center. The D80 conferences highlight service and research work done by students and faculty from Tech and elsewhere. They are open to anybody interested in design and development of projects to serve the poorest 80 percent of humanity.

On Saturday evening, a program called D80 Buzz featured 15 speakers, following a format called Pecha Kucha 20×20, in which each speaker shows 20 slides for 20 seconds each, talking as the slides auto-forward. It is a format developed in 2003 by two architects to counter what they call “the tendency of creative people to talk too much.”

Dedicated to prosperity by design, the D80 Center at Michigan Tech works to assist the most vulnerable 80 percent of humanity in meeting their basic needs for food, water, shelter, sanitation, waste disposal, energy, income and education. Tech students, faculty and staff work on projects on campus and in economically developing communities around the world.

The participants were:
7:00 pm, Jonathan May, Developing a sustainable water source in rural Guatemala
7:10 pm, Katie Valenzuela, No tome la chicha (Don’t drink the chicha)
7:20 pm, Jess Hammersley, Technology Abroad
7:30 pm, Miriam Rios-Sanchez, Remote sensing: A rapid assessment tool to use in water resources studies in developing countries
7:40 pm, Gerard Caneba, Summer 2012 visit to Uganda
7:50 pm, Helena Keller, Monkey Business
8:00 pm, Mark DeYoung, Dealing With the Pits
8:10 pm, Brennan Tymrak, Using Appropedia as a Research Platform for Sustainable Development

8:40 pm, Dave Watkins, The Six Americas as Viewed from India
8:50 pm, Nicole Westphal, Pavlis in India
9:00 pm, Richelle Winkler, Solar Water Disinfection with Salt– Investigating Applications
9:10 pm, Ty Losinski, Micro-Hydro Power in a Coconut Shell!
9:20 pm, Andrea Walvatne, Cooking in a Guatemalan Kitchen
9:30 pm, Kelli Whelan, Up in Smoke: Kitchen 2.0
9:40 pm, Rebecca Bender, Hard Body Engineering, Water Distribution in the Hills of Panama

http://www.mtu.edu/d80/

Michigan Technological University won two more national championships and they didn’t happen on the ice or in the classroom. Paul Mayes won the dual slalom and downhill events at the 2012 USA Cycling Collegiate Mountain Bike Championships, held Oct. 20-21 in Angel Fire, N.M.

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